In furtherance of its objective to modernize Indian Patent and Trademark Offices, the Government of India has achieved a major breakthrough today. The Ministry of Commerce & Industry through a press release has announced launch of electronic filing facilities for patent and trademark applications in India. India now joins the elite group with the USA, Japan, South Korea, China and the European Patent Office.

The Minister of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Kamal Nath while launching the e-filing portal of Indian Patent Office (IPO) expressed hope that eventually the complete process of grant of patent or registration of trademarks will be on-line within a time span of about two years and the Indian Patent and Trademark Office will function as paperless office.

The e-filing facilities would now enable applicants to file their patent and trademark applications from anywhere in the world at any time and at their convenience through Internet. The State Bank of India has been authorized to receive the payment towards the fees through their Payment Gateway. Indeed, this enterprising development would save time and money and diminish the hassles involved in visiting and filing the applications in the Patent & Trademark office.

The Government's Intellectual Property India website www.ipindiaonline.gov.in provide access to the e-filing portals for patents and trademarks. In order to use the facility the users are required to register on the said portals by way of a simple registration process. The user id and password given by the portal would enable the users to login the portal from where the users can download Client Software for preparing patent applications offline. The Client Software would enable the users to prepare patent applications in the acceptable format. The users then can digitally sign and upload the application (of maximum permitted size of 5 MB) on to the IPO server, process application fee transaction, review application status and receive acknowledgment from the IPO.

Dwelling on the future initiatives, the Minister said that the next step would be to make Indian Patent Office (IPO) an International Search Authority (ISA) and an International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. According to the Minister, applications to achieve the above would be filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization shortly. He further informed that India was at the advanced stage of joining the Madrid Protocol for international registration of trademarks and a Bill to bring requisite amendments in the Trade Mark Laws would be introduced in the forthcoming session of the Parliament.